Companies must carry out energy analysis and incorporate environmental accounting practices to reduce green house gas emission levels at their facilities. The government, in turn, could enforce a form of taxation based on companies contribution to climate change, according to Dr Anand A. Samuel, Pro Vice-Chancellor, VIT University.

Addressing a seminar on global warming and climate change, organised by the Confederation of Indian Industry, he urged the government to adopt Genuine Progress Indication (GPI) and not Gross Domestic Product (GDP) as a metric to measure growth. GPI considers only positive spending on economy and does not include expenditure related to defence, healthcare and environment protection. If five lakh people in India are afflicted with cancer, their requirement and spending on cancer drugs would be high and this will boost sales in the pharma industry. GDP growth owing to this is not the indicator of a healthy economy, he said.

Though the government has encouraged adopting renewable sources of energy, the pace of adoption has been hampered by process inefficiencies.